Athletics: O'Sullivan gaining pace in chase of Chinese puzzle: Life on the run as Ireland's second-favourite daughter moves into middle-distance overdrive. Mike Rowbottom reports

SOMETHING in the slant of Sonia O'Sullivan's eyes reminds you of a jungle cat. This particular cat is friendly, but she has claws. And she moves with a power and grace on the track that has established her as the finest woman middle distance runner in the world - outside China.

Had it not been for the emergence of the Chinese women at last year's World Championships, the 24-year-old Irishwoman would be a double champion at 3,000 and 1500 metres. As it was, she finished fourth in the first event, and took silver in the latter. But while leading runners such as Liz McColgan and Lynn Jennings have made it very obvious that they attribute the Chinese surge to drug abuse, O'Sullivan has kept her own counsel.

'I have no idea why they are so good,' she said. 'But what they have done is help me to go faster. This year I have worked a lot harder in training. They made me feel unafraid of running fast.'

This season O'Sullivan has translated that work into performances with an unwavering certainty that bodes ill for any potential rivals at next month's European Championships, where she will run the 1500m and either the 800 or the 3000m.

A week ago last Friday, she set a world record for 2,000m of 5min 25.36sec. Last Friday at Crystal Palace she lowered Tatyana Kazankina's 10-year-old European 3,000m record to 8:21.64. On Tuesday, in Nice, she ran the 1500m in the world's fastest time this year, 3:59.10sec. On Friday she runs the mile in Oslo, where the world record could be under threat.

O'Sullivan's whole life is up and running. She now has homes in London and Philadelphia, having moved away from her roots in Cobh - where her father, John, was once goalkeeper for Cobh Ramblers, the team with whom Roy Keane began his career. The welcome there for her after the World Championships was tumultuous. Autograph and photograph hunters made pilgrimages to her house, close to Cobh Cathedral. Indeed, in Ireland as a whole she is such a well-liked figure that in a poll last year she was voted the most popular woman behind the President, Mary Robinson.

Such an intensity of affection is something she feels comfortable with only in small doses. She values it; she is slightly bemused by it; but she cannot afford to let it interfere with the thing she does best.

O'Sullivan is low-key and charming - but also deeply determined. 'I think I have always wanted to do my own thing,' she said. 'I like my own space and time. If I don't feel good about something I will let people know.'

When she was 17 her coach, Sean Kennedy, wanted her to miss the Irish Junior Championships in order to produce a fast time in the Cork City event two days later.

'I argued with him,' she recalls. 'I said if I was capable of winning an all-Ireland medal it wasn't right to throw the chance away.'

She went to the Junior Championships anyway, won a gold medal, and returned to Cork to reduce her 3,000m personal best from 9:38 to 9:01. 'It was one of the most important decisions I ever made,' she recalls. 'I said to Sean: 'It didn't make any difference, did it?' He said: 'Maybe you would have run faster'.'

Such has been the pattern of O'Sullivan's life. She has never accepted the bounds laid down for her, always had the belief that she can go beyond them. Marcus O'Sullivan, Ireland's world indoor 1500m champion, has witnessed much of his namesake's career. He recalls discussing the young O'Sullivan with his former coach in Cork, Donald Walsh. 'This girl is going to be really good,' Walsh told him.

O'Sullivan had followed in the tracks of other distinguished Irish runners, such as Ron Delany, the 1956 Olympic 1500m champion, and Eamonn Coghlan, the 1983 world 5,000m champion, in taking up a scholarship at Villanova University in Philadelphia. Sonia was soon invited to share in the tradition, to become the next through the 'Villanova pipeline', as Marcus O'Sullivan puts it.

It was an invaluable bridge between her junior and senior careers, but even there she took coaches aback as she asserted herself strongly over training methods.

Both in Philadelphia, where she has taken over Marcus O'Sullivan's old apartment, and in London, where she has bought a flat in Teddington, she is part of an extended family of athletes.

In Teddington she is near to her manager, Kim McDonald, and his community of Kenyan and Irish athletes. In Bushey and Richmond parks, and on the track at Norbiton, she regularly works out with runners such as Moses Kiptanui, Kenya's world steeplechase champion, and Marcus O'Sullivan, who has had a good opportunity to evaluate her special talent.

'She has a tremendous capacity for performance and competition,' he said. 'It is naturally in-built in her to be able to drive herself and also enjoy what she is doing. The drive is just unparalleled. It is hard to put into words, but one athlete can always tell it in another.'

(Photograph omitted)